Functions of social role
In sociology, functions indicate what consequences (for society and its individual members) actions performed by a particular person have.
Personal behavior, priorities and attitudes, choices and emotions are determined by a number of factors:
- position in society;
- environmental conditions;
- type of activity performed;
- internal qualities of the individual, the spiritual world.
Due to the fact that people need each other to satisfy their individual needs, certain relationships and interactions are established between them. At the same time, each person fulfills his social role.
Throughout life, an individual masters many social roles, which he is often forced to play simultaneously. This allows us to make the coexistence of different people in one society as comfortable and possible as possible.
The social role performs a number of important functions:
- Sets certain rules of the game: duties and norms, rights, interactions between roles (boss-subordinate, boss-client, boss-tax inspector, etc.). Social adaptation implies mastering and studying the rules of the game - the laws of a given society.
- Allows you to realize different sides of your personality. Different roles (friend, parent, boss, public figure, etc.) enable a person to demonstrate different qualities. The more roles an individual masters, the more multifaceted and rich his personality will become, the better he will understand others.
- Provides an opportunity to demonstrate and develop potential qualities inherent in a person: softness, toughness, mercy, etc. Only in the process of fulfilling a social role can a person discover his capabilities.
- Allows you to explore the resources of each person's personal capabilities. Teaches you to use the best combination of qualities for adequate behavior in a given situation.
The relationship between social role and social status
Social status influences individual behavior. Knowing the social status of a person, one can predict what qualities are characteristic of him and what actions can be expected from him. The expected behavior of an individual associated with his status is called a social role.
Definition 2
A social role is a pattern of behavior that is recognized as the most appropriate for an individual of a given status in society. A role specifies exactly how to act in a given situation.
Any individual is a reflection of the totality of social relations of his historical period.
Social role and social status in communication perform the following functions:
- regulatory function - helps to quickly select the necessary interaction scenario without spending large resources;
- adaptation function – allows you to quickly find a suitable model of behavior when changing social status;
- cognitive function – the ability to recognize one’s personal potential, carry out processes of self-knowledge;
- the function of self-realization is the manifestation of the best qualities of a person, the achievement of desired goals.
The process of learning social roles allows one to assimilate cultural norms. Each status of a given role is characterized by its own norms, laws, and customs. The acceptance of most norms depends on the status of the individual. Some norms are accepted by all members of society. Those norms and rules that are acceptable for one status may be unacceptable for another. Socialization teaches role behavior and allows the individual to become a part of society.
Note 1
From the many social roles and statuses offered to an individual by society, he can choose those that will most fully help him apply his abilities and realize his plans. The adoption of a certain social role is greatly influenced by biological and personal characteristics and social conditions. Any social role only outlines a pattern of human behavior; the individual chooses the ways of fulfilling the role himself.
A social role is a social function of an individual, a way of behavior of people that corresponds to accepted norms, depending on their status or position in society, in the system of interpersonal relations."
A social role is a normatively approved and prescribed method, algorithm, pattern of activity and behavior of an individual, voluntarily or forcibly accepted by society or a social group in the implementation of certain social functions. A social role is a model of individual behavior determined by its status.
There is a point of view that a social role is a set of social norms that society or a group encourages or forces an individual to master. Usually, a social role is defined as a dynamic aspect of status, as a list of real functions assigned by a group to its member as a set of expected behavioral stereotypes associated with the performance of a specific job.
American social psychologist T. Shibutani introduces the concept of a conventional role. He tries to distinguish between social and conventional roles, but this cannot be done strictly and obviously enough.
A conventional role, according to T. Shibutani, is an idea of a prescribed pattern of behavior that is expected and required from a subject in a given situation, if the position he occupies in a joint action is known. It seems that its conventional role, with very minor errors, can be considered synonymous with the social role. It is very important that, in the understanding of T. Shibutani, roles are defined as a template, an algorithm of mutual rights and obligations, and not just as a behavioral standard. An obligation, he notes, is something that a subject feels compelled to do because of the role he plays and other people expect and demand that he act in a certain way. However, it is impossible to completely separate the pattern from behavior: it is behavior that ultimately acts as a measure of whether the conventional role is being realized adequately or inadequately.
Another American psychologist, T. Parsons, defines a role as a structurally organized, normatively regulated participation of a person in a specific process of social interaction with certain specific role partners. He believed that any role can be described by the following five main characteristics: emotionality; different roles require varying degrees of emotionality; the method of obtaining: some roles are prescribed, others are fought; structured: some roles are formed and strictly limited, others are blurred; formalization: some roles are implemented in strictly established templates, algorithms specified from the outside or by the subject himself, others are implemented spontaneously, creatively; motivation: a system of personal needs that are satisfied by the very fact of playing roles.
Social roles are distinguished by their significance. The role is objectively set by social position, regardless of the individual characteristics of the person occupying this position. The fulfillment of a social role must correspond to accepted social norms and expectations (esteem) of others.
There is practically no complete coincidence between role expectation and role performance. The quality of role performance depends on many conditions; it is especially important that the role corresponds to the interests and needs of the individual. An individual who does not live up to expectations enters into conflict with society and incurs social and group sanctions.
Since each person plays several roles, role conflict is possible: parents and peers, for example, expect different behavior from a teenager, and he, playing the roles of son and friend, cannot simultaneously meet their expectations. Role conflict is the subject’s experience of ambiguity or inconsistency of role requirements on the part of different social communities of which he is a member.
The following conflicts are possible:
Intrapersonal: caused by contradictory demands placed on the behavior of an individual in different social roles, and even more so in a particular social role;
Intra-role: arises as a result of contradictions in the requirements for the fulfillment of a social role by different participants in the interaction;
Personal-role: arises due to a discrepancy between a person’s ideas about himself and his role functions;
Innovative: appears as a result of a discrepancy between previously formed value orientations and the requirements of the new social situation.
Each person has a certain idea of how he will perform this or that role. Different roles have different importance for the individual.
The role structure of an individual can be integrated or disintegrated depending on the harmony or conflict of social relations.
The internal structure of the personality (picture of the world, desires, attitudes) may favor certain social roles and not contribute to the choice of other social roles. Role expectations are also not random situational factors; they arise from the requirements of the social, including corporate, system.
Depending on the norms and expectations assigned to a particular social role, the latter may be:
The represented roles (the system of expectations of the individual and certain groups);
Subjective roles (expectations that a person associates with his status, i.e. his subjective ideas about how he should act in relation to persons with other statuses);
Roles played (observed behavior of a person having a given status in relation to another person with a different status).
There is a normative structure for fulfilling a social role, which consists of:
Descriptions of behavior (characteristic of a given role);
Prescriptions (requirements for this implementation);
Assessments of performance of the prescribed role;
Sanctions for violation of prescribed requirements.
Since personality is a complex social system, we can say that it is a set of social roles and its individual characteristics,
People identify with their social role in different ways. Some merge with it as much as possible and behave in accordance with its instructions everywhere, even where this is absolutely not required. It happens that different social roles inherent in one and the same subject have different ranks, different personal significance, and relevance. In other words, the subject does not identify himself equally with all his roles: with some personally significant roles more, with others less. Such a strong distancing from the role occurs that one can talk about its movement from the actual part of the sphere of consciousness to the periphery, or even about its displacement from the sphere of consciousness completely.
The experience of practicing psychologists suggests that if an objectively relevant social role is not recognized as such by the subject, then within the framework of this role he will experience internal and external conflicts.
Various roles are learned through the process of socialization. As an example, here is the role repertoire of a small group:
Leader: a member of a group, for whom others recognize the right to make responsible decisions in situations that are significant to it, decisions that affect the interests of group members and determine the direction and nature of the activities and behavior of the entire group (more about this in the topic “Leadership as a socio-psychological phenomenon”) ;
Expert: a member of a group who has special knowledge, abilities, skills that the group requires or that the group simply respects;
Members are passive and adaptable: they strive to maintain their anonymity;
- “extreme” member of the group: lags behind everyone else due to personal limitations or fears;
Opponent: an oppositionist who actively opposes the leader;
Martyr: calling for help and refusing it;
Moralist: A group member who is always right;
Interceptor: a group member who seizes the initiative from the leader;
Pet: a group member who evokes tender feelings and is constantly in need of protection;
Aggressor;
Jester;
Provocateur;
Defender;
Whiner;
Rescuer;
Pedant;
Victim, etc.
The group always strives to expand its repertoire of roles. The individual performance of a role by a person has a personal touch, which depends on his knowledge and ability to be in a given role, on its significance for him, on the desire to more or less meet the expectations of others (for example, it is easy to become a father, it is difficult to be a father).
It is believed that the concept of social role in sociology was first introduced by R. Linton, although already in F. Nietzsche this word appears in a completely sociological sense: “Concern for maintaining existence imposes on the majority of male Europeans a strictly defined role, as they say, a career.” From a sociological point of view, any organization of society or group presupposes the presence of a set of distinct roles. In particular, P. Berger believes that “society is a network of social roles.”
Social role - it is a system of expected behavior that is determined by normative duties and the rights corresponding to these duties.
For example, an educational institution as a type of social organization presupposes the presence of a director, teachers and students. Weight is social roles associated with a specific set of responsibilities and rights. Thus, the teacher is obliged to follow the orders of the director, not be late for his lessons, prepare for them conscientiously, guide students towards socially approved behavior, be sufficiently demanding and fair, he is prohibited from resorting to physical punishment of students, etc. At the same time, he has the right to certain signs of respect associated with his role as a teacher: students must stand up when he appears, call him by name and patronymic, unquestioningly follow his orders related to the educational process, maintain silence in the classroom when he speaks, and etc. Nevertheless, fulfilling a social role allows for some freedom for the manifestation of individual qualities: a teacher can be harsh and soft, maintain a strict distance in relation to students and behave with them as an older comrade. A student can be diligent or careless, obedient or impudent. All of these are acceptable individual shades of social roles.
Regulatory requirements associated with a social role, as a rule, are more or less known to the participants in role interaction, and therefore give rise to certain role expectations: all participants expect from each other behavior that fits into the context of these social roles. Thanks to this, people's social behavior becomes largely predictable.
However, role requirements allow for some freedom and the behavior of a group member is not mechanically determined by the role he performs. Thus, from literature and life, there are cases when, at a critical moment, a person takes on the role of leader and saves the situation, from whom, due to his usual role in the group, no one expected this. E. Goffman argues that an individual performing a social role is aware of the existence of a distance between himself and his role. emphasized the variability of normative requirements associated with a social role. R. Merton noted their “dual character.” For example, a research scientist is required to adhere to the principles and methods established by science and at the same time create and substantiate new ideas, sometimes to the detriment of accepted ones; a good surgeon is not only one who performs routine operations well, but also one who can take a risky, unconventional decision, saving the patient’s life. Thus, a certain amount of initiative is an integral part of fulfilling a social role.
An individual always performs not just one social role at the same time, but several, sometimes even many. The position of a person performing only one role is always pathological and assumes that he lives in conditions of complete isolation from society (he is a patient in a psychiatric clinic or a prisoner in prison). Even in a family, a person plays not one, but several roles - he is a son, a brother, a husband, and a father. In addition, he performs a number of roles in others: he is a boss for his subordinates, and a subordinate for his boss, and a doctor for his patients, and a teacher for his students at a medical institute, and a friend of his friend, and a neighbor of the residents of his house, and a member of some political party, etc.
Role normative requirements are an element of the system of social norms adopted by a given society. However, they are specific and valid only in relation to those who occupy a certain social position. Many role requirements are absurd outside of a specific role situation. For example, a woman who comes to see a doctor undresses at his request, fulfilling her role as a patient. But if a passer-by on the street makes a similar demand, she will run or call for help.
The relationship between special role norms and generally valid norms is very complex. Many role prescriptions are not associated with them at all, and some role norms are of an exceptional nature, putting the people who perform them in a special position when general norms do not apply to them. For example, a doctor is obliged to maintain medical confidentiality, and a priest is obliged to maintain the secret of confession, therefore, by law, they are not subject to the obligation to disclose this information when testifying in court. The discrepancy between general and role norms can be so great that the role holder is almost subject to public contempt, although his position is necessary and recognized by society (executioner, secret police agent).
Ideas about social role
It is believed that the concept of “social role” was introduced into sociology in the first half of the 19th century. American scientist R. Linton. For the German philosopher F. Nietzsche, this word appears in a completely sociological sense: “The concern for maintaining existence imposes on the majority of male Europeans a strictly defined role, as they say, a career.”
From a sociological point of view, any organization of society or group presupposes the presence of a set of roles that differ from each other. In particular, the American sociologist P. Berger believes that modern society is a “network of social roles.”
Social role is a system of expected behavior that is determined by normative responsibilities and the rights corresponding to these responsibilities. For example, an educational institution as a type of social organization presupposes the presence of a director, teachers and students. These social roles carry a specific set of responsibilities and rights. The teacher is obliged to follow the orders of the director, not be late for his lessons, prepare for them conscientiously, guide students towards socially approved behavior, be demanding and fair, he is prohibited from resorting to physical punishment of students, etc. At the same time, he has the right to certain signs of respect associated with his role as a teacher: students must stand up when he appears, call him by name and patronymic, follow his orders related to the educational process, maintain silence in the class when he speaks, etc. .P.
Nevertheless, fulfilling a social role allows some freedom for the manifestation of individual qualities: the teacher can be harsh or soft, keep a distance from the students or behave with them as a senior comrade. A student can be diligent or careless, obedient or impudent. All of these are acceptable individual shades of social roles. Consequently, the behavior of an individual in a group is not determined mechanically by the social role he performs. Thus, from literature and life there are cases when, at critical moments, people took on the role of leader and saved the situation, from whom no one expected this from their usual roles in the group.
The American sociologist R. Merton was the first to draw attention to the fact that everyone has not one social role, but several, and this position became the basis role set theories.
Thus, individuals, as bearers of certain social statuses, when entering into social relations, always simultaneously perform several social roles determined by one or another social status. The position of a person who performs only one role is always pathological and implies that he lives in isolation from society. Usually a person in society plays several roles. For example, a man's social status allows him to have many social roles: in a family he can be a husband and father or a son and brother; at work - a boss or a subordinate, and at the same time a boss for some and a subordinate for others; in his professional activity he can be a doctor and at the same time a patient of another doctor; a member of a political party and a neighbor of a member of another political party, etc.
In modern sociology, a set of roles corresponding to a certain social status is called role set. For example, the status of a teacher at a particular educational institution has its own distinctive set of roles that connects it with holders of correlative statuses - other teachers, students, director, laboratory assistants, officials of the Ministry of Education, members of professional associations, i.e. with those who are somehow related to the professional activities of a teacher. In this regard, sociology distinguishes between the concepts of “role set” and “multiplicity of roles.” The latter concept refers to the various social statuses (set of statuses) that an individual possesses. The concept of “role set” denotes only those roles that act as dynamic aspects of only a given social status.
Social role is the fixation of a certain position occupied by one or another individual in the system of social relations.
There are 2 types of social relations in society: formal (conventional) – regulated by legislation and social status; informal (interpersonal) – regulated by feelings.
A social role is a socially necessary type of social activity and a way of behavior of an individual that bears the stamp of social evaluation.
The concept of social role was first proposed by American sociologists R. Linton and J. Mead. (in the 30s of the last century)
Each individual performs not one, but several social roles.
Types of social roles:
1. formal social roles (teacher, cook)
2. interpersonal social roles (friend, leader, enemy)
3. socio-demographic roles (mother, man, sister)
Characteristics of a social role
The main characteristics of a social role are highlighted by the American sociologist T. Parsons: scale, method of obtaining, emotionality, formalization, motivation. The scope of the role depends on the range of interpersonal relationships. The larger the range, the larger the scale. For example, the social roles of spouses have a very large scale, since the widest range of relationships is established between husband and wife.
The way a role is acquired depends on how inevitable the role is for the person. Thus, the roles of a young man, an old man, a man, a woman are automatically determined by the age and gender of a person and do not require special efforts to acquire them. Other roles are achieved or even won during a person's life and as a result of special efforts.
Social roles differ significantly in their level of emotionality. Each role carries within itself certain possibilities for the emotional manifestation of its subject.
Formalization as a descriptive characteristic of a social role is determined by the specifics of interpersonal relationships of the bearer of this role. Some roles involve the establishment of only formal relationships between people with strict regulation of rules of behavior; others are only informal; still others may combine both formal and informal relationships.
Motivation depends on the needs and motives of a person. Different roles are driven by different motives. Parents, caring for the well-being of their child, are guided primarily by a feeling of love and care; the leader works for the sake of the cause, etc.
All social roles are subject to public assessment (not the individual, but the type of activity) and are associated with rights and responsibilities. If there is harmony of rights and responsibilities, it means that a person has correctly learned his social role.
The influence of social role on personality development
The influence of social role on personality development is great. Personality development is facilitated by its interaction with persons playing a range of roles, as well as by its participation in the largest possible role repertoire. The more social roles an individual is able to reproduce, the more adapted to life he is. The process of personality development often acts as the dynamics of mastering social roles.
Role conflicts
Role conflict is a situation in which an individual with a certain status is faced with incompatible expectations.
The situation of role conflict is caused by the fact that the individual is unable to fulfill the requirements of the role.
In role theories, it is customary to distinguish between two types of conflicts: inter-role and intra-role.
Social role is interpreted as an expectation, type of activity, idea, stereotype, social function, set of norms, etc.
In addition, there are two main role characteristics(aspect):
1) role expectation- what is expected of me
2) role playing- what I will actually perform.
A certain consistency between role expectations and role performance serves as a guarantee of optimal social interaction.
Types of social roles are determined by the variability of social groups, types of activities and relationships in which the individual is included.
Classification of social roles according to Gerhard:
1. Status - changeable with the greatest difficulty, prescribed to us from birth.
Man Woman
Age roles
The role of a citizen of his country
2. Positional - determined by the professional and qualification division of labor in society. (Physicists, chemists, journalists; Senior and junior researchers; professors, categories of actors). More defined than status ones. Status ones, in turn, overlap with positional ones.
3. Situational - performed in a particular situation. Pedestrian, buyer, etc. More degrees of freedom. The difference in their number can lead to conflict.
Brown's classification of positional roles at work:
1. Landmark.
2. Approver, emotional leader.
3. Unique roles due to the characteristics of the person. For example, a scapegoat.
T. Parsons. An approach to the problem of social roles. Characteristics of social role analysis:
1. Emotionality (the doctor and the cemetery attendant must be restrained).
2. Method of obtaining (methods are achieved (student) and prescribed).
3. Scale (ophthalmologist, salesperson or friend, parent).
4. Formalization. Formalized roles contain a certain structure of actions. Librarian and friend - behavior regarding the borrowed book.
5. Motivation. The motive is always there, but we are not always aware of it.
T. Shibutani. Classification of social roles:
1. Conventional. People agree on the rules for their implementation (teacher and student).
2. Interpersonal. Informal, individualized. How to behave with this or that person.
Depending on social relations, they distinguish social And interpersonal social roles.
Social roles are related with social status, profession or type of activity (teacher, student, student, seller). In interactionist concepts, such roles are called conventional(convention - agreement). These are standardized impersonal roles, built on the basis of rights and responsibilities, regardless of who plays these roles. Highlight socio-demographic roles: husband, wife, daughter, son, grandson... Man and woman are also social roles (gender roles), biologically predetermined and presupposing specific modes of behavior.
Interpersonal roles are related with interpersonal relationships that are regulated at the emotional level (leader, offended, neglected, family idol, loved one, etc.).
In life, in interpersonal relationships, each person acts in some dominant social role, a unique social role as the most typical individual image, familiar to others. Changing a habitual image is extremely difficult both for the person himself and for the perception of the people around him.
According to the degree of manifestation they distinguish active And latent roles.
Active roles are determined a specific social situation and are performed at a given moment in time (teacher in class).
Latent roles manifest themselves in the current situation, although the subject is potentially the bearer of this role (teacher at home).
Each of us is the bearer of a large number of latent social roles.
According to the method of assimilation, roles are divided into:
Prescribed(determined by age, gender, nationality).
Purchased(which the subject acquires in the process of socialization).
The main characteristics of the social role highlighted American sociologist T. Parsons. These include:
- scale;
- method of receipt;
- emotionality;
- formalization;
- motivation.
Scale role depends on the range of interpersonal relationships. The larger the range, the larger the scale (for example, the social roles of spouses have a very large scale, the seller - the buyer: interaction is carried out on a specific occasion - purchases - the scale is small).
How to get a role depends on how inevitable the role is for the person.
The roles of a young man, an old man, a man, a woman are conditioned and do not require special efforts to acquire them. Other roles are achieved through the course of a person's life and as a result of deliberate efforts: student, academic, writer, etc.
Level of emotionality: each role carries within itself certain possibilities for the emotional manifestation of its subject.
There are roles that require emotional restraint and control: investigator, surgeon, etc. And vice versa, increased emotionality is required from actors.
Formalization as a descriptive characteristic of a social role is determined by the specifics of interpersonal relationships of the bearer of this role. Some roles involve the establishment of only formal relationships between people with strict regulation of rules of behavior; others, on the contrary, are only informal; still others may combine both.
(the traffic police inspector only formally addresses the violator).
Motivation depends on the needs and motives of the person. Different roles are driven by different motives. Parents, caring for the well-being of their child, are guided primarily by a feeling of love and care; the leader works for the sake of the cause, etc.
There is no doubt that the influence of social role on personality development is quite large. Personality development is facilitated by its interaction with persons playing a range of roles, as well as its participation in the largest possible role repertoire. The more social roles an individual is able to reproduce, the more adapted to life he is. Thus, the process of personality development often acts as the dynamics of mastering social roles.
(additional information, not for recording)
Mastering a new role can make a huge difference in changing a person. In psychotherapy, there is even a corresponding method of behavior correction - imagotherapy (imago - image). The patient is asked to enter a new image, to play a role as in a play. In this case, the responsibility function is not borne by the person himself, but by his role, which sets new patterned behavior. A person is forced to act differently based on a new role. The origins of imagotherapy are the psychodrama method of D. Moreno. He treated people for neuroses, providing them with the opportunity to play those roles that they would like, but could not fulfill in life.
12. Social expectations of personality
EXPECTATIONS - a social psychology term used to denote the expectation of something in interpersonal relationships, for example, evaluation of an individual's actions by other people
Expectations are significantly determined by the individual characteristics of the individual, the objective activity and organizational structure of the group, group norms, and standards of a set of socio-psychological expectations, being internally accepted by the individual, they form part of his value orientations.
Interpersonal communication gives expectation a psychological meaning - expectation acts as a motive for human behavior
Expectations play a regulatory role in a student group: on the one hand, they ensure adaptation, adaptation of the student to his fellow students, and on the other hand, public opinion, standards of behavior accepted in the student environment, through expectations appropriately project the consciousness and actions of each member of the student group, contribute to adaptation groups to individuals.
